If he would have toured with Queen after a time after Freddie passed. I think Paul Rodgers did a great job touring with Queen as well as Adam Lambert. I think George would have been phenomenal. Your thoughts?
shareWeren't Michael and Mercury friends?
So maybe he could have made some appearances with them as a way to salute his old pal, but giving up a solo career to take an old friend's job would have been... weird.
well i guess it would be nice ...
shareNot very business savvy.
Remember Freddie Mercury didn't come out , and when he died of AIDS in the early 1990's it was a shock to most fans.
George Michael appealed to a different crowd altogether, the gay night club crowd.
Queen's fans were mostly straight white males who loved Rock&Roll.
George Michael singing for Queen would probably HURT ticket sales, since their fans usually didn't mix.
"Wake me up"is probably one of the gayest songs of my generation, so the replacement wouldn't fit in our minds... younger audience members would be more forgiving.
Hmmmm perhaps.
Queen fans seem to love his collaboration with the boys on Somebody To Love. And really, as much as Queen fans might be straight white males who loved Rock&Roll (if that’s true, I know many gay people who are also big Queen fans), one thing I don’t think they are is stupid. They all know Freddie was a flaming homo, so I don’t think that George would have turned them off so much. He had the pipes and the showmanship, I don’t think his previous musical genres would have mattered either way to them.
I mean, if Adam Lambert can pull crowds as the frontman, I believe George would have been fine. Not that he would have seriously considered the gig. He fought hard to be recognised as a solo artist and I think that was his happy place.
They know NOW, but at the time of his death people were generally shocked, most of people missed it.
It seems I misinterpreted your OP, I was thinking of a tour featuring Michael in the early 1990's.
Really?? I was just a wee lad when Freddie was still alive but even I knew he was extremely light in the loafers. If anyone claims they didn’t at least suspect Freddie was gay I think they were living in denial!
shareI was in college at the time, my generation and the boomer's just didn't see it.
I think because some of Queen's songs were very testosterone filled (Rocked Hard) that fooled most. Queen had a song called Fat Bottom Girls after all.
Ah the generation gap - fair enough. I thought the flouncing and village people moustache and leather pants would have been a dead give away 😆
shareThe music Queen made was a effective camouflage.
We KNEW George Michael was gay, despite his heterosexual I Want Your Sex video.
See that’s weird, George had a HUGE teenage girl following, whereas I can’t remember any girls saying they were turned on by Freddie 🤷♂️
shareNot so weird, many women were in love with Liberace and were blind to his sexuality.
I am not gay, but I can see where teen's would prefer a more handsome Michael over Mercury. Also, Michael's target audience WAS teenage girls, where Queen's was not.
“See that’s weird, George had a HUGE teenage girl following, whereas I can’t remember any girls saying they were turned on by Freddie 🤷♂️“
Exactly. I’m gen x and I went to a George Michale concert in the early 90’s and it was almost all screaming women in the audience. I never thought he was gay until all the rumor stuff started surfacing much later.
Really?
I guess you missed this video in 1986 then.
https://youtu.be/ELflyACZXQQ
This music video cannot be made by a straight man.
I know what you mean now looking back at it. Were you around when this video came out? I was a kid and I don’t think most people suspected anything, especially watching all his videos that came out after.
shareThe video came out in 1984.
I recall George Michael saying that at that time he was straight, or at least thought he was. He didn't realize he was gay until later in life. And realize that Andrew Ridgely is half of the duo, and he's straight, but looks about the same as George Michael there.
While in 2021 that video looks like something only a gay man would make, in 1984 that look was fairly mainstream, and no one at the time saw that video and thought "gay man." For better or worse, that's how we dressed in the mid-'80s.
Back in the 80's it wasn't well known amongst fans and the record buying public that George Michael preferred men, he had a huge following of young girls who all believed he was straight.
I’m sure a few of the music press had suspicions about George and remember a mischievous Boy George dropping a hint that a fellow pop rival was gay.
GM kept it very private like Rock Hudson before him.
Freddie on the other hand, by the early eighties most knew he was gay or bi with his moustache and leathers, I never met anyone who cared either way.